SOURCE: “Performing Persecution,” in Malevolent Nature: Witch Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England, Cornell University Press, 1995, pp. 193-207.

In the following excerpt, Willis contends that Richard demonizes his mother and all women for his own defects as well as for his distance from the succession to the throne of England.

Richard's Mothers

In the middle of Richard III, as Richard is consolidating his power en route to his short-lived kingship, he makes a blatantly fraudulant charge of witchcraft against Queen Elizabeth and Jane Shore:

Look how I am bewitched! Behold, mine arm Is like a blasted sapling withered up. And this is Edward's wife, that monstrous witch, Consorted with that harlot strumpet Shore, That by their witchcraft thus have marked me. 

(3.4.68-72)

What has been suggested in the tetralogy's two earlier examples of witchcraft prosecution is now taken one step farther. Richard initiates a “witch-hunt” in...